One of the most popular methods to generate energy is hydrocarbon combustion, which includes natural gas, petroleum gas, coal and liquid hydrocarbons, such as petroleum crude oil. Combustion generates heat, steam, electricity, and other types of energy. Gas turbines, an internal combustion engine, have been a representative machine to use hydrocarbons for generating energy. A gas turbine has two main components, a combustion chamber and a rotating turbine. Energy is generated from hydrocarbon combustion, and the efficiency is strongly dependent on the firing temperature—the greater the temperature the more efficient. Current gas turbines can reach temperature of 1430° C.
Liquid fuel is a common hydrocarbon used in various machines, and diesel has been a common liquid fuel due to its low viscosity and cleanness. Due to increasing demand, heavy oil is a more acceptable alternative to diesel. In spite of its wide availability and low economic value, heavy oil has many drawbacks. Using heavy oil generates soot and other incomplete combustion particles, air pollutants, and other pollutants, such as SOx and NOx, during combustion and affects the air quality. Heavy oil also contains metallic compounds. In most cases, those metals are vanadium, nickel, iron, alkali, and alkaline earth metal-containing compounds. The metal-containing compounds found in the heavy oil can cause corrosion in the gas turbine during the combustion process. Vanadium compounds can severely corrode the metallic and protective layers when exposed to elevated temperatures in the gas turbine. Vanadium compounds, which are present as organometallic compounds in heavy oil, are converted to vanadium oxide (V2O5) during combustion. Vanadium oxide has a low melting point of 675° C., which means vanadium oxide melts at much lesser temperatures than the firing temperatures of gas turbines. Melted vanadium oxide adheres to the hot surface in gas turbine and reacts with metallic and protective layers to cause corrosion.